


Shadowplay

by Medie



Series: Teen Wolf 100 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since the day of his birth, the shadows have loved him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadowplay

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt at fic_promptly as well as for the "Shadow" square of my TW100 Table

The shadows have always loved Stiles. When he was little, he hated that. He didn't like the shadows. Shadows were dark, creeping around and swallowing everything in their path; they weren't like the light. The light loved his mom. Swirled up around her, embraced her, made her glow like an angel. Stiles can still close his eyes and see her in the kitchen, the warm yellow of the morning sun creeping across the white windowsill to catch the highlights in her hair. 

She always started humming. The soft, wordless tunes would fill the kitchen, brightening the light around her even as it coaxed his Dad downstairs for coffee.

The light never did that for Stiles, not even after she was gone and the kitchen stayed cool and empty. He taught himself her recipes, tried to remember the songs, and spent morning after morning walking her steps and humming, but to no avail. The light stayed outside, dull and lifeless compared to the glow of his memories.

The shadows, however, reached out. They wrapped themselves around his legs, brushed at his arms and his hair, whispering tunes of their own and hiding him when he needed to be hid.

Stiles learned to love the shadows like they loved him. They're an escape, a protector, and they provide him one in the woods with Scott. The Alpha rushes by him in a blur of motion, never once seeing him. The shadows having caught him up even before he knew he needed it, Stiles tries to reach for Scott, but it's too late.

They don't, however, hide him from his Dad. 

Fickle friends, his shadows.

*

Except not.

*

Stiles didn't plan on it, but he gets a lot of practice summoning the shadows. Those first few weeks of dodging the Alpha and the Argents while helping Scott train are like a kind of boot-camp.

He gets good at wrapping them up in darkness so thick even a werewolf can't see through them, of conjuring up constructs so dense that they're almost solid, and he doesn't even realize how strong the connection is until that night in the school. The Alpha is there and he's hunting them and Stiles can _feel_ their terror. He sees Jackson skid on the hallway floor, grabbing Lydia up when she slips too, and feels it when their bodies hit the wall, scattering the shadows around them. 

He draws a breath, holds it in his lungs, and asks the shadows to help. They respond by swirling up around Jackson and Lydia both, hiding them as they did Stiles that first night, keeping them safe until the Alpha is gone by.

He does it again and again, even though each stop means they get farther away from him, until they're safe in the lab and Scott's with them. They're safe there for now and he asks the shadows to swallow up the door, keep his friends out of the Alpha's reach for just a little while longer. 

They do. 

Stiles slumps against a wall, exhausted, letting the shadows swarm over him. He can feel their concern as they creep over his skin, comforting him, feeding him their strength, all that they can see and all that they know, and he's safe for now. 

It's then that the shadows tug at him once more. They keep doing that. They've been doing it for years and, maybe, the light did the same thing for his mom. He wonders how many secrets did the light whisper to her, were they anything like the ones the shadows tell him now, and he's never, ever missed her more.

He chokes back a sob, plunging into the safety of the shadows embrace, and sees what they've been trying to tell him.

Derek.

He lets the familiar ache of his mother's absence settle, ebbing back into the depths of himself and his own shadows, and reaches for the image instead. He's outside, sprawled on the grass, and Stiles starts to grieve. He's not sure what to make of Derek, even less sure what to make of his own reaction to Derek, but this isn't right. He didn't deserve this. 

Stiles pushes at the image, wanting it anywhere but in his face, but the shadows won't let him. They persist, holding it up for his attention, until he sees what they're trying to tell him.

Derek's chest is rising, falling, in a steady (if shallow) rhythm. 

He's alive. He's alive and he's healing. 

Stiles grins and makes one more request of the shadows.

*

"Do I get to know how you did it?" 

Stiles unlocks his jeep, dumps his backpack into it, and turns to face Derek. He'd say there's no point in denying it, but the truth is that he doesn't want to. He likes the way this feels. The shadows have always loved him and, maybe, he loves them back a little bit too. "Same way I know you've been watching me for five minutes, but you were sitting in your car for like twenty minutes before that. You know, in some jurisdictions, that would qualify as seriously creepy."

Calling the look on Derek's face hilarious is probably like the understatement of the millennium, but Stiles doesn't want to cheapen the moment. Instead, he glories shamelessly in it until he finally shrugs and says, "It's just something I can do."

"The cops walked right past me," Derek says. "One practically stepped on me." 

"Yeah, it's totally cool like that." Stiles shrugs. "Would have been total game over if one of them had shined a light on you, but fortune favors the brave and shit, right?" He lets the shadows play over him, enjoying the way that Derek's eyes track the movement. "So, I've gotta ask, how'd you know it was me?"

Stiles startles a little when Derek reaches forward, slips his fingers into the darkness. Unprepared for it, he's so open with it that he can feel the touch skim over him like its bare skin. Totally overwhelmed, Stiles closes his eyes when Derek leans in to say, "The shadows? They smell like you. It's like you're everywhere I go."

Pulse pounding in his ears, Stiles tries to picture that. Derek healing beneath a cover of darkness carrying his scent.

He shivers. Feels, through the shadows, the same run through Derek.

"That's because I sort of am." 

*

He never was afraid of the dark. Nightfall settles on him like a warm blanket. Stiles can almost see and hear everything if he wants to. He can see the Argents and make the shadows nip at their heels, dogging them through the woods until they're headed away from Derek. He shrouds Scott from the Alpha, buying just a little more time, but he's more cautious then before.

The shadows carry his scent, his presence, and if Derek can smell it, so can the Alpha. 

There are limits even to darkness and light. The light didn't keep his mother from dying anymore than the darkness will one day be able to save him. It doesn't keep Peter from attacking Lydia or taking Stiles.

*

It does, however, help him figure something out. 

"It's a cycle. Day and night. Night and Day. Good and Evil. It's all a cycle, right?" 

Deaton isn't surprised when Stiles shows up at his door. Just makes him coffee and sits him in a corner. "It's more than that," he says, "but yes, that's the gist of it. Your mother understood that. We all do in time." 

Curling fingers around the mug, Stiles looks at him. "You're--"

"Not like you," Deaton says. He sits with his own mug, staring at it for a long moment. "We all have our places and our responsibilities. I can't help you figure out yours anymore than you can help me with mine, but you didn't come here for that anymore than your mother did."

Stiles sits up so fast he sloshes coffee on his hand. Yelping, he waves his fingers wildly and tries not to blush when Deaton grins a little. "You knew her?"

"We were friends." Deaton hands him a cloth and Stiles wipes at his fingers. "There are lot of people out there who can do a lot of things, but the hunters make it difficult to congregate. When you stumble across someone you can talk to, they become a sanctuary of sorts. We could talk to each other. It helps, sometimes, just knowing there's someone close who understands." 

It does. 

"Mom was day. I'm night." Stiles frowns. "Did she have to--was it because of me?"

"No. Day and night are an endless cycle, Stiles," Deaton says. "They exist simultaneously every single moment of the day. Your presence here didn't mean she had to die. You're human, Stiles. No matter how powerful you get, how far you can reach, you'll always be human." 

"I don't get it." Stiles feels worse than he sounds and its a relief to feel the shadows creeping down over his shoulders. They tug at him, pushing in the same instant, and he can feel Derek running out into the night. The moon is rising, weakening his awareness of everything, but Stiles can still feel him getting closer. "I'm not supposed to, am I?"

"No." Deaton takes the mug Stiles holds out, putting it aside. "Do you know what hell is, really?"

Stiles can guess. "Having all the answers."

"Enjoy the mystery, Stiles," Deaton says. "That's half the fun of shadows."


End file.
